Herbert M. “Tippen” Davidson, Jr
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HERBERT M. “TIPPEN” DAVIDSON, JR. BIOGRAPHY Mr. Davidson, currently the publisher of the Daytona News Journal , was born in Chicago, Illinois on August 10, 1925. His grandfather, Julius Davidson, and father, Herbert M. Davidson, jointly acquired the Daytona News Journal in December, 1928. The paper was a small evening paper with a circulation of only 4,400. Davidson’s parents were both graduates of Columbia Journalism School. He attended the local schools in Daytona , but did not work on the paper until he was in college. Tippen attended the Juliard School of Music with the intention of becoming a classically trained musician. He then married Josephine Field, gave up his career as a musician and returned to Daytona Beach in 1947 to work as a reporter for his father. He learned the business quickly and worked as city editor, managing editor, general manager and in 1985, was named publisher and co-editor with his wife. As of 2001, the Daytona Beach paper employs around 850 people and has a daily circulation of approximately 100,000 with 119,000 on Sunday. It is, after the St. Petersburg Times, the second largest independently owned newspaper in the state. SUMMARY During his interview, Tippen Davidson talks about how his grandfather and parents took over the newspaper and the difficult times they faced during the Depression. He mentions his fathers’ impact on the county’s decision to go with voting machines and signature verification to cut down on graft and corruption at the voting box. He also FNP 53 Davidson page 2 explains that the paper was the first to go to offset printing, was innovative in its use of color and constantly invested in the latest technology. Mr. Davidson takes pride in the fact that the News Journal has managed to remain independent despite many offers by chains to buy the paper. In discussing his career, he fondly remembers the challenges of being city editor, “my idea of a really great job”, and delineates the paper’s strong financial support for community activities- the Daytona Playhouse, the new auditorium, the Museum of Photography, Stetson University, Bethune-Cookman College, the Ormond Beach Museum and the bi-annual visit of the London Symphony Orchestra. In addition, the paper gives a Medallion of Excellence to the 30-40 outstanding seniors in the county’s public schools. Mr. Davidson makes insightful and often tart comments on USA Today ; environmental concerns; Bike Week and other events that draw tourists to the area; letters to the editor; crime; Governors Reubin Askew and Bob Graham; the 2000 presidential campaign; comic strips; Jackie Robinson’s integration of baseball; editorial cartoons; and labor unions. Mr. Davidson contends that his newspaper is the conscience of the community and did great service for the city by advocating cooperation between the races during integration of the schools and also by improving sanitation at local restaurants and opening hospital board meetings to the state Sunshine Law. Tippen Davidson was interviewed by Julian M. Pleasants on November 15, 2000 at Daytona Beach, Florida. FNP 53 Davidson page 3 P: Talk a little bit about your early background and your schooling. D: My parents brought me here in 1928 when they came to manage the News Journal . My grandfather and my father jointly acquired control of it and took possession of it in December, 1928. I grew up here through the Depression. I am a product of local schools and was underfoot at the newspaper all during my formative years. I did not have anything actually active to do with the newspaper until after high school. While I was in college, I worked in the newsroom in the summer. I was not intending to be a newspaperman. I was intending to be a professional musician, so I was really just making the most of a summer job. Then when I left school, I wanted to get married, so I gave up the idea of being a professional musician and hit my old man up for a full-time job and became a reporter here. P: Explain why your grandfather bought this newspaper. D: He bought it because my father wanted him to. My father was the newspaperman. My father and my mother were both graduates of Columbia School of Journalism, both great newspaper people. My grandfather was a businessman. His training was in the import/export business.... My father always wanted to have his own newspaper, as many newspapermen have. They looked around. They looked at papers in California and New Mexico and other places, and then this one became available and they bought it. P: Discuss the difficulties your father faced in the early years of the paper. During the Depression, I suspect, it was difficult for everybody in Florida, since the Depression here started a little bit ahead of the rest of the country. D: Yes, actually, that little dip after the Florida boom. The bust of the Florida boom FNP 53 Davidson page 4 was really responsible for the existence of the News Journal as it is today. The boom shattered, leaving two small papers in Daytona Beach, the Journal in the morning, the News in the afternoon, both in desperate straits. Somebody with money arrived, Mr. Eugene C. Pullium... and he and a partner bought the two little papers and combined them and proceeded to try to build them back.... During the boom, they [the two papers] ran pages and pages... of full-page advertisements of the real-estate speculators, and nobody ever thought of asking anyone to pay for anything. Their credit was good. Then their credit suddenly was not good... and I think that both of the papers were really up against it when Mr. Pullium arrived. At any rate, he acquired the properties and put them together and... did succeed at putting it back on its feet. When my father and grandfather showed up, it was a going concern, not a rich one, not a gold-mine, but a going concern.... Of course, they had an excellent [year in] 1928, made money. That was the last profit they saw until after World War II. It was pretty desperate. P: How did they keep the paper going all that time? D: They kept it going on that money that my grandfather made in the bulk-materials business in the Midwest. He had a few hundred thousand dollars put away, and that sufficed to keep them going. They had a competitor starting in 1933. The politicians here convinced Mr. Robert Gore, the proprietor of the Fort Lauderdale Daily News , that this was a fertile field and that there would be no trouble running us out of it. There was a great deal of trouble running us out of it.... P: Discuss your early years on the paper as a reporter and how you developed your skills as a newspaperman. D: You have to understand that this was a newspaper family. My father and mother FNP 53 Davidson page 5 both worked on the paper. My father was the editor, wrote the editorials, and when that was done, he sat at the desk and served as news editor and, in fact, did everything in the newsroom that needed doing with a very small staff of help. My mother was everything else. She was the Sunday editor, the women’s editor.... But newspaper was talked incessantly at home. It just became a language. It became an atmosphere in which I was included.... Along with everyone else who has ever learned to be a reporter, I had to learn the rudiments. I was not given any special treatment by my mother, who did most of the early training. She was tough, but fortunately I was brought up speaking and writing pretty good English and I managed to survive.... My late wife took up reporting,... she was absolutely delighted to find out there was a job in which the main thing you did was stick your nose into other people’s business. That was her idea of heaven. She became an absolutely marvelous reporter. I mean, one of the great ones, one of the intuitive ones. P: One of the things I have noticed about this newspaper is that you have reinvested money over and over again into new technology. Perhaps you could explain your decision to go to offset-printing. D: Yes, indeed. We were one of the first newspapers in the country to do that. We started up.... the first four-plate wide press in a daily newspaper in the Southeast.... P: When did you go to color? D: We went to color back in the letter-press days. As I told you, we were doing processed color by curving the photo engravings and scotch-taping them to the blanks, printing color that way. We had been doing color separations in this place since the early 1960s. FNP 53 Davidson page 6 P: Let me ask you about the expansion. You begin purchasing some weekly newspapers.... D: Let me put these in order for you. We had an offer of a shopper in west Volusia [County], the DeLand Pennysaver , a very well-run profitable shopper. The man came to see me and said he would like to sell. He wanted to get out and write novels.... So we met this man’s price and took over the DeLand Pennysaver . It did well from the very first.... At that time, we bought the Flagler Tribune from them [ Florida Times-Union ] ... and the Halifax Reporter ... We started the Palm Coast News , in competition with the Tribune .... The Halifax Reporter ..